


First Time for Everything

by HiddenTreasures



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-19 02:24:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7340842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenTreasures/pseuds/HiddenTreasures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kids hurt themselves all the time, but no parent ever wants to experience the agony of their child's first broken bone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Time for Everything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badwolfrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/gifts).



> This was inspired by the throwaway line from [Ghosts of the Past](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6128281), where the Doctor mentions that his daughter broke her wrist falling out of a tree. 
> 
> And this also kinda sorta counts for this week’s TimePetalsPrompts weekly ficlet prompt of children + summer.

A loud wail interrupted the Sunday barbecue at the Tyler manor. By now, after three and a half years, the Doctor knew and could recognize the various sounds and noises his daughter made. He could tell the difference between a cry of frustration, a cry of anger, and a cry of fear. This was none of those. No, this cry was one of pure agony, and was a sound the Doctor had never heard before and never wanted to hear again.

He immediately pushed away from the kitchen counter where he had been about to start seasoning the hamburger meat, and rushed to the back garden with Rose hot on his heels. There, he saw Tony clambering down from a tree he had been climbing, and he saw the prone form of his daughter on the ground, lying atop an arm that was most definitely bent the wrong way.

The Doctor fell to his knees beside his daughter, his heart pounding too quickly and too heavily in his chest.

“Sophie, darling?” he asked, skating his hands and his sonic over her tiny body, checking for any other injuries.

She was lying unmoving on the grass, and the Doctor felt ill. If she had been at the height Tony had been—a good twenty or so feet—when she fell…

“Don’t do this to me, darling. Please,” he whimpered. He didn’t feel any lumps or bumps in his initial perusal of her back or her neck, and the sonic came back clear, but she still wasn’t moving.

Rose dropped to her knees beside him and rested a shaking hand on his lower back.

“Sophie? Sweetheart?” Rose asked, tears thickening her voice as she reached out for her daughter.

Sophie finally started wriggling about, and the Doctor let out a heavy breath, hearing Rose let out an identical one. Sophie rolled awkwardly to her back before rocking up to sit on her bum, and the moment she saw the worried faces of her mother and father, she let out another loud cry. She cradled her left arm to her chest as Rose and the Doctor pressed frantic kisses to her head.

“Let Daddy see your arm, darling,” he finally whispered. “Let us see, Soph.”

Sophie carefully removed the hand hiding her injured arm. The Doctor’s heart dropped as he saw the violent bruising wrapping around from her hand to her elbow, and the sickening bump of her wrist jutting up from the plane of her arm. He heard Rose’s sharp inhale, which made Sophie start crying again.

“Mummy! Daddy!” she wailed, covering it again with her opposite hand. “My arm hurts!”

“I know, darling,” he murmured, wishing that he could make her feel better. He would have every bone in his body broken if it meant that Sophie would stop hurting. “Let me see again.”

The Doctor gently reached out for his daughter’s arm, but Sophie recoiled, batting his outstretched hand away.

“You see with your eyes!” she screamed, parroting the words she had been told when she wanted to look at something her parents deemed breakable. “Don’t touch!”

The Doctor held his hands up in surrender.

“Okay, okay, I won’t touch,” he said. He then turned to Rose. “We need to take her to the hospital.”

Rose nodded and quickly stood up and ran into the house to quickly gather their things.

The Doctor got to his feet, too, before he bent down and placed his hands under Sophie’s armpits, carefully lifting her up, trying not to jar her wrist. He placed her on his hip, leaving ample room between her arm and his chest, and he took a moment to press his lips across her forehead, letting the warmth of her and the smell of her calm the heart that had been racing for the past ten minutes.

“I’m so sorry, Sophie,” he whispered, running his fingers through her hair Bits of dirt and grass fluttered to the ground, and the Doctor continued to brush her off until most of the nature was gone. “We’ll get you all patched up in no time.”

He walked Sophie through the house, letting Jackie and Pete give her a kiss goodbye and wish her well, and comforting Tony as he sobbed out an apology.

“It’s not your fault, Tony,” the Doctor said, even though there was a part of him, the Dad part, that wanted to shout at the boy for letting Sophie climb the tree after him. But he knew it wouldn’t help anything, and really, he should’ve been outside with Sophie, making sure she stayed safe. “It was an accident. She’ll be all right. Just…maybe wait til she’s a little older to start climbing trees, yeah?”

The boy nodded and stepped up to hug the Doctor’s leg.

“Ready?” Rose asked, car keys in hand.

The Doctor nodded and followed her to their car, where she fumbled with the keys, dropping them twice before she managed to get the car unlocked.

“Easy, love,” the Doctor whispered, pressing his lips to Rose’s forehead as she scoffed in frustration. He took a moment to buckle Sophie into her car seat, before turning to his wife. “How about you let me drive, eh? You can keep Sophie company in the back.”

Rose let out a breath as she nodded gratefully, climbing into the back of their car with their sniffling daughter.

oOoOoOo

Hours later, the two exhausted adults carried their sleeping child into their flat.

What a day. Taking Sophie in for an X-ray had been nearly as painful as finding her crumpled beneath the tree. She had wailed and screamed when the Torchwood doctor had to move her arm in order to get a clear picture of the bone. The X-ray only confirmed what the Doctor and Rose already knew: she had a distal radius fracture in her wrist. Her radius had snapped upwards away from the bone in her arm. The Doctor quickly realized what this would mean for his daughter: they would have to reset the bone before splinting it.

He had held her in his lap as the doctor took Sophie’s wrist in hand, ready to set the bone again, while Rose sat beside him, offering their daughter as much comfort as she could. He had grabbed Rose’s hand and buried his face in Sophie’s hair, clinging to her tightly to keep her still, as the doctor quickly popped Sophie’s bone back into alignment. The noise her wrist made and the shriek she let out turned his blood cold.

Even hours later, he could still hear the echoing crackle.

They woke Sophie long enough to wipe her clean of the dirty and sweat of the day and to change her into jimjams. They tucked Sophie into her bed, and by silent agreement got themselves ready for bed, despite the fact that the sun was still peaking over the horizon.

The Doctor noticed how pale and quiet Rose was as she went through her nighttime rituals.

“C’mere,” he whispered, taking the toothpaste from her shaking hands and tugging her into his arms.

She fiercely returned his embrace, holding him tightly, and the Doctor’s heart broke when he felt moisture dampening his sleep shirt.

“Shhh, she’s okay,” he murmured, rocking them gently. “She’ll be okay. She’s fine.”

“I was so scared,” she whimpered into his shirt. “So scared.”

The Doctor closed his eyes against the memories of the terrifying moment when he had found Sophie lying limply beneath the tree, and the way she hadn’t moved or responded to him for a few seconds.

“I know, love,” he said, pressing his lips to her forehead. “So was I. I’d never been so scared in all my lives.”

The Doctor’s brain whizzed out of control as it started feeding him facts about how lucky Sophie really was that she’d been able to walk away with nothing more than a broken bone. If she had fallen at a different angle, it was quite possible she could have sustained a spinal cord injury. The Doctor whimpered at the thought, and held Rose closer, wanting to delete this day from memory.

“I should’ve been out there with her,” the Doctor murmured, unwrapping his arms from around his wife to rub them wearily over his face. “I should’ve made her stay where I could see her. I should’ve…”

“Don’t do that to yourself, Doctor,” Rose quietly admonished. “There’s nothing we could’ve done. She and Tony play outside together all the time.”

“She could’ve broken her neck!” the Doctor shouted, his voice cracking. “She could’ve _died_! My little girl…”

His breathing hitched. Rose stepped towards him and lifted herself to wrap her arms around his neck. He clutched her desperately to him, burying his face in her shoulder as his eyes burned hotly.

“She’s okay,” Rose murmured, repeating the words he had told her minutes earlier. “She’s okay.”

“I love you,” he whispered into her hair. “I love you so much, Rose. You and Sophie. My precious girls.”

Rose stroked his hair soothingly for a few moments as she nuzzled her cheek against his. He finally pulled back far enough to catch her lips in a desperate kiss. They channeled all of their fear and anger of the day through their lips until Rose’s mind cleared, and she slowed the kiss. She moved her lips more gracefully across his and felt him echo her gentleness until the kiss had dissolved into tiny presses of their lips together.

The Doctor was breathing raggedly as he rested his forehead against Rose’s.

“Let’s go to bed,” she suggested softly, her breath puffing against his mouth.

He tilted his lips down for one last lingering kiss, before releasing her so they could finish their bedtime routines. Just as he was about to turn down their sheets, he heard the telltale creaking of Sophie’s door, and the soft tapping of her feet on the floor.

He spared a quick glance towards Rose, lifting his eyebrows to warn her that they were most likely going to have an extra bedmate tonight, before he opened up their bedroom door for their daughter.

“All right, Soph?”

“My arm hurts,” she whimpered, hugging her splinted arm to her chest.

He quickly counted back, and realized that it had been long enough now that they could give Sophie another dose of pain medication. Rose, bless her, had the same thought and had a capful of the liquid grape-flavored ibuprofen ready.

He watched Sophie grimace and shudder as she swallowed down the medicine, and the fact that she took it without fussing told the Doctor that she felt truly horrid. His stomach clenched at the thought, and he pressed an apologetic kiss to Sophie’s temple.

“Want to sleep with me and Mummy tonight?” he asked, wanting to keep her by his side.

She nodded sleepily at him, and lifted her good arm towards him to be picked up. He lifted her carefully, nuzzling his nose against hers, before he set her down in the middle of their bed beside Rose. Sophie snuggled up against her mother automatically, resting her arm atop her own hip as she nestled her face near Rose’s chest. Rose covered them both with a sheet, before nodding to the Doctor that he could turn the light out.

He did, and quickly joined his family in bed. He lay down on his side to face his wife and daughter, and he gently stroked Sophie’s hair out of his face.

“Love you, Daddy,” Sophie murmured groggily, lifting her head into his touch.

“I love you, too, Sophie darling,” he whispered thickly, dropping a kiss to the back of her head. “Sweet dreams.”

He continued stroking Sophie’s hair until he heard her breathing even out. Rose brought his hand to her lips and pressed a tender kiss to the backs of his fingers, before letting him trail his hand down until it rested on her hip. She wrapped her own arm around Sophie, and let her eyes slip shut.

The Doctor rubbed Rose’s hip softly with his thumb as he watched her fall asleep within minutes. He contented himself to watching his family, watching Sophie’s torso rise and fall against Rose’s chest as they both breathed, watching Rose’s fingers twitch as she fell deeper into sleep. His eyes lingered on the lump in the sheet caused by Sophie’s splinted arm.

He sighed and forced himself to look away. Kids hurt themselves all the time. He logically knew that. They were prone to bumps and bruises and broken bones as they tested their body’s limits. But that didn’t stop the nearly crippling guilt he had been feeling since he first heard Sophie’s scream. His job as her dad was to keep her safe and protect her. He had woefully failed in that respect.

“Stop it.”

The Doctor snapped his eyes up to Rose’s.

“I can practically hear you blaming yourself,” she whispered, and he had to crack a smile. His Rose knew him so well. “This isn’t your fault.”

He hummed noncommittally.

“Doctor,” she said firmly.

“Rose,” he parroted, smirking when he watched her roll her eyes at him.

“I just feel so helpless,” he said finally, glancing down at the bump in the blanket from Sophie’s arm.

“I know you do, love,” Rose said sympathetically. “I do too. But we’re doing the best we can for her. She got hurt, and we took care of her, and we’re here to keep taking care of her until she’s better again. That’s all parenthood really is, really.”

The Doctor smiled at how simple Rose made it seem. He reckoned she did have a bit of a point though. He would love and look after Sophie until his dying breath, and that was all he could do.

“Thanks,” he whispered, lifting her hand to press a kiss to her palm before setting it back down where he’d found it.

“Anytime,” Rose murmured, stifling a yawn into her pillow.

“Go to sleep,” he whispered, rubbing slow circles into her hip once more.

She hummed out something that may have been an agreement as her eyes slipped closed and her breathing deepened once more.

He exhaled wearily and scooted closer to his family until he could feel the heat of Sophie’s tiny body radiating against his chest. He kept his arm draped across Rose’s hip as he synced his breathing with the tiny puffs of air he could hear coming from Rose and Sophie, and let the steady rhythm relax his muscles. He watched his precious girls for a few more minutes before he let his heavy eyes fall shut and he drifted off into a restless sleep.


End file.
